Why We Left LA During A Pandemic...

I you know even as we sit here talking about I'm so glad on the other side yeah this has been the hardest thing we have ever ever done yeah hi guys we've talked about doing this video for a while because there's been some pretty large life changes within the last six months that we we thought we should address on the channel because you're gonna see in the videos things changing a little bit and so yeah firstly we have moved from Los Angeles we're in Ireland we moved back home how long ago two months ago two months ago back where we started yeah so we're back home like ten minutes from my family very close to home and the biggest life changes are to move a house and to have a baby and we've done both of those things within the last like eight months and we also through in moving a whole other country as well into the mix in a pandemic so it is been one of the biggest questions we've been getting on like social media and stuff is why did we leave LA and I think it's been probably the hardest question to answer because it's been it's so multifaceted and you know I think on one level we didn't want to leave LA and then on another level we really wants to leave LA for you know for me to be closer to family and stuff like that but I think and I think that's what the the major reason was was when I was pregnant with or with Oliver we were back here for the summer and we realized how nice it was to have grandparents around and friends and you know aunts and uncles and it was just such a sweet few weeks and then leaving and being pregnant was a very emotional experience and then she was in bits but I think coming back to LA then you realized how like how much life is going to change adding another baby and all your traveling that you had to do because we were so far from you know some of the work was here some of the workers in the state so it's a lot of moving for you for the last ten years I've traveled for different TV shows or work abroad or in London or LA whatever for the first time I was resenting travel and I really hated having to get on the plane and know what I was leaving behind and know that it was extra pressure on Sophie but also that I had to do the work and so when I was doing the work I was even feeling like stressed because I was away everyone was under pressure like there was one I remember that time we did a press tour in Asia for it for O'Donnell's meals and minutes this TV show that BBC Asia had bought and at some point on the very last day of like a full week's travel there I was singing row row row your boat down the phone like I don't know how to sell him nothing was working he was so upset it was just I started getting really anxious and stressed and I I don't know what to do is I kind of call Donal in it in a panic Kong like please just sing down the phone on the app and it was super fun and when we did have that trip back home it was just like oh that feels like a big hog and everything feels safe and saying yeah have all the people like that we want around us and you know obviously we have such amazing friends and made such great connections in LA but you know a lot of our friends had kids the same age yes you know it was always hard to lean on other people because they were all you know they were always taken over yes everyone was children being a parent is tough being a parent is tough but I have to admit that I think I was probably the main yeah forth in making the moon yeah happen but in general I'm the one who drags my feet anyway like if we're on holiday I'll be the one sitting in the swimming pool about two hours before we need to leave yeah because I love moving yeah it was very much like that movie case I kind of liked to hold on to laughs like savor the last moments in a place but yeah so I suppose like the the kind of the catalyst was just having that support system and being closer to home and like I think you know after five years in LA we had had such a great time we kind of felt that it was time to give Ireland a little bit of a go and also for us to be closer to family and free and the ease for you to be able to kind of go back to Sweden as well yeah yeah that was a big thing that I just wanted to yeah be able to get on a flight if something happened or a birthday or something and um yeah that wasn't really possible formally I think around this whole thing of we moved back because it's a family we moved back because we needed help basically we have you know it just started preschool before we laughed and so had kind of got a taste of like what normal like parent life is yeah but then speaking of normal parent life there's Oliver like go get him yeah okay we have not introduced to the channel before now is our little buddy Oliver who is a know what six months yeah just turned six months he's six months old he's full of smiles yeah and he's elope he's already started crawling a little yeah he's kind of doing it like an army crawl am easing yeah he started easing he's a we're not getting chatted of him yet but it's probably early days he's full of life yeah and no one gets on great with him apart from when he steals his toys Oliver he's like grabbing for his toys he's not a big fan no gonna have to get used yeah I think we need to work on sharing and in fact the funny thing is like when we talked about coming back we talked about coming back for like an extended period of time maybe like six months or three months maybe for the summer but I think from that perspective like we hadn't fully committed to the idea of being back here and like fully being home in Ireland so that we'd kind of cross over between LA and darling yeah but so which we started talking about us September yeah Oliver was born in end of November yeah so we knew we didn't want to do anything over Christmas and then like you said it was hard knowing really how how long we wanted to go for and my granddad turned 90 so that was a big thing we wanted to to try and come back for and then in the middle of all of this deciding kovat 19 happened and we have flights booked though yes we did have flights booked for the end of April and then all the flights started getting cancelled and flight routes change when we were in LA when coverage his we were so far away from the idea of moving out of our house and moving across country you know the transatlantic flights and all that it was so far from what we had do and I had like in my head I was going to say goodbye to the city go you know go to all my favourite restaurants do you know lots of time with with friends yeah we left and then when the lockdown happened that she kind of it changed everything and we weren't in control of how we to say goodbye to the house or at the city or friends and there was that was probably that was probably the hardest part of it because I think it went from you know an idea that we were gonna leave and do it all on our own terms and then all of a sudden it was everything was being pushed forward everything was being escalated all of a sudden like I rang the Irish consulate and she was kind of advising us that if we wanted to leave we'd need to leave sooner rather than later because flights were gonna be canceled and routes were gonna be changed and so literally our plan just kind of went out the window and we realized very quickly that we needed to leave as soon as possible rather than just waiting around which meant my worst fear which is having to rush to leave I need to do it slow and need to take my time with it and literally like Sophie was incredible at just wrapping it up and like all of a sudden being on top of the lists dragging it out so what had happened to us no I used to go to school the like trying to pack in my head I had the idea that he was gonna be in school and I could pack during the day but he was home yeah that was probably the hardest thing we we packed up a house thirty-six boxes with no childcare at all it was just us with screaming children and it was and the doors and no playground to go to our newest it was intense I you know even as we sit here talking about I'm so glad it was probably like we've there's the babies there's been like the moves this has been the hardest thing we have ever ever done yeah but actually we should mention that towards the end so like basically we decided we got packed we were on the move we got max kind of arranged around that time our good friend Arthur who was who was our neighbor in LA he lived like ten minutes from us and all through our time in LA he was such a big support him and his husband Brian Arthur decided that if we were going he was going because he knew he wouldn't he didn't know when he'd be able to get out of LA so he knew he was gonna come back so he actually moved in with us and helped us like cart furniture up and down the stairs all that was really easy when you didn't have kids but then two kids and a dog later it was really difficult to make it work so Arthur saved our and became like a professional mover a nanny a babysitter he did everything but cook the cargo company came I want to say like two weeks prior to leaving so that was all the big stuff left but then it was you know getting all the kids stuff max left the day before he left LA and then got stuck in London because there was something wrong with the plane you know max finally got to Ireland we had packed up our stuff got an email that our flight was cancelled in the midst of all this having to rebook and then there's this rule that I don't know that a lot of people know of that if you bring a dog into a country you have to travel with them within five days so when our flight got canceled that really pushed pushed it very close to that five days and then it would have been a whole other thing to bring max in so so much stress to try and get everything within this tiny little time frame like this is therapy now and then the two Uber's came it's sixteen bags the two uber drivers were in like hazmat suits with masks and goggles and we were like we were terrified we like because it was that kind of peak period of like anxiety and fear and it just amplified everything we were going through in terms of like the move adding this pandemic that we were kind of coping with that was just it was it was so so tough it was really tough we got out of the bikes into the car got to the airport trying to with two cars find Arthur who had all the bags our car had all the kids you always had to just problem-solve the entire time like how did you get 16 bags two kids and three adults from the kerb to the check-in desk like it was rolling back and forth I did manage to get a selfie in the midst of in the midst of it like when we finally got there after all of that we literally had to fight about the weight of the bags so like you have to like get all the weights right we had so many bags I was trying to not get stroppy because I was like there is about 50 people on this flight and I have two kilos over what difference is it going to make I was about to lose yes thankfully with kids you can travel with car seats and strollers and we were packing all sorts of stuff into those bags as well so we got there a bit we got there in the end okay so we are about to do security it is absolutely and completely empty one one line open this is just crazy crazy town passport are you ready knowing already mojo we were fairly terrified of what the flight was gonna look like and you know being close to people because I mean I was I was not an aisle seat and there was someone right beside me and I was actually very conscious of it I think we're working on something we couldn't get a direct you working on something there so they're like once we kind of were on the flight I knew we'd got through the worst of us and in fairness to the staff we flew with Air France and they did an amazing job you know keeping everyone safe and it was you know that's the thing like there's so many people who were working through what what was going on you know and and doing it safely and making sure other people were safe so we were very thankful and that we were looked after but we had to transfer through Paris in the end because there was no direct flights to Dublin anymore it was our current situation no a pastor from a cardboard box he's at this point speaking of streets so anyway we we finally made it back in Dublin we had like talk through how my parents are gonna pick this up because obviously they can't they couldn't see us so they had to they had to drive their two cars separately they they got in one we got in the other we had to sand hand sanitize the whole thing and yeah it was chaos so like we had to put bags into their car and we couldn't actually hug and say hello even though we haven't seen them since Christmas so it was we waving through a window it's a weird way to say hi there was the weirdest thing and the weirdest thing of all was that we had found a house to come to to move to but we had never seen so we had never been inside the house that we were moving into and so my mom did a FaceTime tour goes beyond that we we kind of like nervously accepted it and we needed somewhere to stay we needed somewhere to come home to and we couldn't come home to my and say so - so we are back in Ireland and we're here for at least the next few months right yeah we're not packing another bag right here we're not getting on a plane for at least a while we need to decompress after the madness that has been and and it's a lovely time to be back you know especially for the kids you know to be close to family especially now where things are opening up and just to say anyone who's watching you know it's been a really tough couple of months for a lot of people and you know there's been amazing stories that have come out of it and we just hope that anyone who's watching is safe and say yeah has come through hopefully the worst of it at this point it's a it's definitely been a challenge for everybody on various different levels so um yeah I hope your I hope you're safe and sound so yeah we suppose we're we're back after five years in a completely other country we've changed in many different ways we have two kids yeah and I think I got another level like it was heartbreaking to leave LA because that's where the boys were born it's where we have some of our you know really great friendships yeah and and you know stopped being able to properly say goodbye to them was very very tough hmm I think we're we're in the right place for right now I keep saying that that's my that's my slogan at the moment really right place for right now and thanks so much for all the support we've had on social media because it has been a tricky few months and until then we're off to baby land play with this little buddy know is about to wake up from his nap so where we sign off and say goodbye bye

Channel: Donal Skehan

Views: 98,429

Rating: 4.9532628 out of 5

Keywords: why i'm leaving la, los angeles, living in la, living in los angeles, moving out of la, moving to la, leaving LA, new york vlog, moving to london, moving to dublin, moving to ireland, moving from america to ireland, donal skehan, sofie skehan, donal skehan vlog, pandemic, covid 19 ireland, covid 19, lockdown, lockdown usa, lockdown ireland, lifestyle, why I left los angeles, LA, LOS ANGELES, HOLLYWOOD, moving vlog, moving vlog los angeles, Why we left LA..., global pandemic

Id: IIHyyVWhDZc

Length: 15min 23sec (923 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 01 2020